Pokémon TCG: Sword and Shield—Brilliant Stars

Hardest Area To Play

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On a state to state basis the comparison is very difficult but I have no qualms making larger generalizations.


1. Central US (Midwest, MO, Great Lakes, Michigan)
2. Southeast US (Florida, Carolinas, MD/Virginia)
3. West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington)

I think it's hard to argue with that...
 
BigChuck01 said:
I've also noticed that differnt regions have different playstyles:

Midwest: Major Archtypes, not much fancy
Florida: Archtypes with lots of tech
California: Fast decks (anyone remember how popular Zapdos was in Cali?)
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I cant judge the other two regions but Midwest is not an archetype area at all. If you look at Rockford Cities last year, which was the hardest city to play in in the midwest, the Top 8 each ran a different deck with over half of them being non-archetypes. Not even different varients of each other, every single deck had very few similarities to any other deck in the top cut.
 
secretsof2113 said:
Did you take a look at the weather that was going on during michigan states? 20 some odd inches of snow in ohio. There was almost no way that people were going to make that trip out there.
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You sing it Sister!

Plus I have not seen mentioned that Ohio is also the home of Austin Reed who did play at Worlds the past two years and was the highest placing US Masters player in Hawaii.

I know that some Ohio players headed south to the Carolinas for Regionals to skip the competition at IN Regionals.
 
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I don't count the Carolinas as one of the hardest regions ... but it's interesting here since we see players from FL, Ohio, TX, VA, and much more along with having a few strong folks of our own.
 
I would say MD/VA is pretty difficult. We have Pramawat, Reed, Anderson and we get people coming from DE and PA sometimes. Yep I live here. I would say though that FL has got to be one of the hardest places. And please note that a state having a highly ranked player doesn't mean it's better. It can also mean that the state is more balanced and that maybe the people who live there couldn't make it to 10+ battle roads and cities.
 
I'm sure I just wasted my time but here are the top 20 Masters in the US

1 Paul Johnston 1992.56 MA WA US
2 Matthew L 1907.38 MA LA US
3 Emmanuel Divens 1905.37 MA MN US
4 Colin M 1895.03 MA MO US
5 Adam Garcia 1891.83 MA TX US
6 Ian Brander 1890.04 MA CO US
7 Con L 1887.93 MA MA US
8 kyle sabelhaus 1879.46 MA SC US
9 Erik Nance 1874.34 MA NC US
10 Tyler Ninomura 1874.30 MA WA US
11 Kayhon Tahmaseb 1871.10 MA OR US
12 Breton Brander 1870.61 MA CO US
13 Jay Hornung 1868.38 MA IA US
14 Austin Reed 1863.78 MA OH US
15 Jason Klaczynski 1862.62 MA IL US
16 Darrell Moreno 1862.23 MA NY US
17 Alex Hill 1860.42 MA FL US
18 Alex Frezza 1858.58 MA MA US
19 Dustin Zimmerman 1857.84 MA IN US
20 Stephen Silvestro 1856.42 MA FL US
 
I've played a Gym Challenge in San Diego and everything else in New York and New England.
I'd say their pretty even.

I always hear about the Mid-West being a monster area, although I have no experience with it.
 
I think Northwest is getting underrated in this thread. I have really felt in the last year the middle tier players in the area have gotten a lot better and more plentiful. The Northwest numbers in general are also huge now, bigger than Cali, probably only still a little smaller than Florida. I top 16'd worlds last year. My two biggest competitors in the battle roads that I fought for my ratings invite last year are both in the top 10 this year, so it could have been either of them instead. Another player was 1st seed at nats. Also the 11-14 World Champion is from here.

Btw, you can't lump Cali and the Northwest together. There's virtually no times where we compete against each other. I'm sure other regions are probably getting improperly lumped together too.
 
WOW thanks to all of you who have posted on this thread this really has opened my eyes on the different areas and how hard they may be to play in thanks to all of you hope to come to your areas and play thanks again
 
If u mean the hardest area its the Midwest REGION,they added more than one state,so thats why it seems but they are very good no lie.. State has to be Florida,Alot of above and beyond players and they create alot of archtypes.
 
MD/VA/WV is underestimated. Not the hardest area by any means, but IMO at least in the top 5.
 
Last year Hawaii, or maybe Columbus Ohio, but mostly because I have no idea about the regions in Japan. Now since Japan isn't USA then Hawaii or Columbus Ohio :D . This year its going to be Columbus Ohio then Florida sometime in August.

" hardest area to play " can be interpreted in many ways: how about hardest place to get a ratings invite? Anywhere with very few players and/or little opportunity to travel. Waves to Scizor
 
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I think the only real way to determine the best area is to look at Nats/Worlds placings, where every area plays eachother.
 
BigChuck01 said:
I think the only real way to determine the best area is to look at Nats/Worlds placings, where every area plays eachother.
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That's a great argument but in all honesty the best players from every region may not be able to make it to worlds. For whatever reason some including price, school, work, Judging:wink: I know I can play this game and I'm not the only judge who can do so.

BLiZz
 
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In all honesty guys. There really isn't a "best player" or a "best area".


I'm not sure most people will disagree with the fact that once a player reaches a certain "elitist" level in this game they just outplay many opponents. However when 2 players of that caliber play each other, there is no outplaying one of them, it usually comes down to whoever gets the better opening hand. Or in today's format - whoever gets the first gardevoir.


So while yes, we could have a competition, the results would vary every time you did the tournament. 10 tournaments could get 10 different results.
 
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